Why Would Someone in Colorado Keep Buying Weed Illegally?

It’s now legal to buy pot in two different ways in Colorado. You can get clearance to use it for medicinal purposes, or you can just go to a dispensary and buy your pot and pay sales and other taxes along the way.

BuzzFeed reports that many in Colorado are just keeping on buying their pot illegally.

But some people like Mario, a 31-year-old graduate student who works part-time at a restaurant, are still turning to the black market for their weed.

Sitting in a vegetarian café near his Denver apartment that has a bathroom covered in graffiti like “Urban Farming Is The Future!”, Mario said he feared being on a medical registry while still in school.

A lifelong Colorado resident, Mario, a slight man with glasses and a goatee, who asked that his last name to be withheld, has yet to step foot in a dispensary. That’s because he can get an ounce of weed for $60 from a coworker whose family member has a home grow. Granted, that’s an unusually low price, as high-quality green generally costs an average of $237 an ounce, according to priceofweed.com, a self-described “global price index for marijuana.”

Purchased legally, without a medical card, that same amount would put him out around $400.

“I’m afraid that information could get somehow compromised,” he said about his fears of his loans being affected by being on a medical registry. “The last thing I’d want is to get my federal funding cut off.”

Heaven forbid.

On the other hand, Mario’s fear of getting on any government list makes sense and should be encouraged.

Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.

Seriously? Four hundred bucks an ounce? The price of weed has gone up astronomically. Walmart needs to get involved, and then the price will drop. Surely the Chinese can grow, harvest, separate, pack, ship and market an ounce of weed for a very small fraction of that price.

You've probably noticed that generally speaking, this push for medicinal and now legal weed for years has been by older folks. There's a simple reason for that: they're not connected anymore. They put themselves in harm's way in a number of ways by having to score. They don't mind paying more to get good weed safely.

Young people are still connected and don't worry about getting sold crap or worry about the police cuz they buy from an in-group. And they don't have as much money.

The only people who get busted for weed are the morons who sell it on street corners, which explains why black guys are in prison far more than white guys even with equal use, and also why black weed is far more expensive: more middle men and more risk.

It's just a cultural thing everyone in the biz knows: white sell inside, black outside. It's a generality, but it's true as far as it goes. There will probably always be a black market. Had cigarettes not been so cheap for so many decades, there'd probably be a black market for them too. But custom and practice and growers has thrown that idea aside.

Makes me wonder.........whats going to happen, Weedwise, on the Reservations?Legal and tax free? Res Gov. tax? I'm thinking of the market in cigarets in some reservation stores. A real cash cow for the Tribes yet still cheaper than the State Taxes.

There is still a black market for alcohol and tobacco, both of which are legal. In both cases price is the main reason, but also dry laws and an anti-authoritarian streak (which is probably also in play when it comes to weed). Heck, there is a black market in (raw) milk as well.

The question is: how big is the market and has legalization shrunk the market in anyway?